Ruaha National Park - Part 1 of the Tanzanian Adventure

Laumi in Ruaha National Park 

The Ruaha National Park is located in the middle of Tanzania and is one of the biggest and most beatiful national park. With an area of 20.226 m2 you have a lot to explore. 

Who doesn`t like to wakeup to a view like this. The birds are singing, the monkeys are enjoing the early sunbeams and the hippos relax in the river. Sometimes during the day and night you hear various animal sounds and sometimes while you go to your nightly toilette session you hear that a hippo is waddling right outside of your Tent. Sometimes it is scary in the night but if you stay in your tent and don`t provoke the animals you`ll be fine. 

The Safari tour:

The main attraction in this national park is the safari tour. You will sit in a car and a driver will guide you through the nationalpark. There you will see a variety of animals of all sizes. The guides are very well trained so don`t be afraid when a lion is 5 meter away from you. Personally the best part of the safari is the peace in this park. I often describe it to my friends as the garden of eden. There is only nature around you and so many animals live in peace with eachother and only kill if it`s necessary. 

My Equipment and Settings:

My main camera was a fuji x-t10. The 50-230mm f4.5 lens is my go to lens when i`m photographing animals. I have a lot of zoom to get as close as possible to the subject. My other lens was a 16-50 f3.5 which i use when i need a wide angle or if there`s not enough light. I like to keep my iso high to keep my shutter speed as low as possible. This is important if the animal moves so i can get a sharp shot. I set the iso around 640 and the shutterspeed about 1/500th of a sec. I change the exposure mainly with the aperature and sometimes the shutterspeed if the conditions are bad. It is important to keep some spare batteries with you because you will be shooting allday. 

Elephants are very common in the ruaha nationalpark. I can guarantee you that you will see a lot of them. 

A lioness at the riverbed. There are a few lions in the park. You need a little bit of luck to see some. 

Monkeys and other smaller mammals are very common. You will see a variety of different species.